


Leap of Faith

by damalur



Category: DCU, Man of Steel (2013)
Genre: Developing Relationship, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-29
Updated: 2015-10-29
Packaged: 2018-04-28 17:08:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5098541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/damalur/pseuds/damalur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's all uphill after the first kiss.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Leap of Faith

**Author's Note:**

  * For [htbthomas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/htbthomas/gifts).



  
  
  
  
_Let me not to the marriage of true minds  
Admit impediments._

— William Shakespeare

 

_Well, who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?_

— Chico Marx

 

 

 

When Lois was young and sharp and hungry, her watchword was _skepticism_. She prided herself on being the devil's advocate; she would fact-check ( _had_ fact-checked) her own mother, something which caused her-father-the-General no end of sorrow. As she grew older and sharper and hungrier, she realized that open-mindedness could be just as valuable a weapon in her reporter's arsenal as skepticism, and she married the two accordingly, honing doubt and intuition together until she became the kind of reporter whose name was synonymous with veracity even in the age of TV ticker news.

She valued integrity but recognized it for the rare thing it was, worshipped justice but realized that enlightened self-interest was the best she was going to get, and liked people while retaining a deep reservoir of frustrated grief for humanity as a whole. Her nickname at the _Planet_ was 'Mad-Dog'; elsewhere they called her far worse, both to her face and behind her back. Lois's coping technique was whiskey, and her revenge was excellence. She contained multitudes, but she was not in any way a woman who believed in tripe like love at first sight.

And then… she met Clark Kent, and while the whiskey and excellence continued, she learned to give a little ground on the third point. It wasn't whatever people thought it was. At first, the source of her drive to find him was curiosity, the greatest of her sins; later, after many years and many lectures from Perry, she held on because she'd sunk her teeth into the story and wasn't about to give up her lead without a fight.

The more she heard about Clark Kent, though, the more her drive took on a different meaning. By the time she finally tracked him down in that backwater town in Kansas, it wasn't about satisfying her curiosity; it wasn't about headlines; it wasn't even (or at least not entirely) about the truth. By the time was tracked him down in Kansas, all that she really wanted was to…

 _Meet_ him. Well. How about that.

 

-

 

She lasted four hours into his first day at work. Ostensibly she dragged him out of the office to be her grunt while she tracked down a lead, but in reality she'd taken him to her favorite haunt so she could have him to herself for a little while longer. Not that she'd admit that out loud—Lois was in favor of the truth on a large scale, but in small, personal ways she was occasionally willing to compromise if it benefitted her.

"What's your poison?" she said.

He smiled that guileless smile of his and said, "Surprise me, Lois." He said her name a lot, and in response she tried very hard not to like it. She ordered them both lagers with a basket of onion rings to share, and not once did Clark look away from her face to the pretty waitress.

"So," she said, after the beer had arrived.

The smile put in another appearance. Lois, who was a worldly woman of thirty-eight, was glad she had the experience and steadiness to avoid being swept off her feet. She refused to let her lips twitch in response and instead nailed him with a hard look that in no way softened when he continued to gaze at her without blinking. 

"How in the world did you land a job at the _Planet_?" she said. "I haven't heard of you. Nobody's heard of you. I sat in the lobby every day for six months before Perry took me on as a floater"—she'd been twenty-one and fresh out of college—"and I had to bleed myself dry for bylines"—he'd given her the city beat ten weeks later—

"You don't want to work together?" said Clark. She couldn't tell if he was teasing her or if his hangdog expression was serious. Lois squinted at him. "I have my degree," he added. "I took correspondence courses."

"Online courses," she corrected automatically, "nobody calls them that anymore. Come on, what did you say to Perry?" Her voice dropped. "Did you tell him you could set him on fire with your eyes?"

Clark shrugged. "He was impressed by how fast I type," he said.

"We're journalists," said Lois around a mouthful of onion ring. "We all know how to type, Smallville. Why? And how?"

"Lois Lane," he said, "are you telling me you don't know?"

Lois swallowed while she thought, but she'd already risen to his challenge, and they both knew it. "The city still needs rebuilding," she said. "Even if you can break the sound barrier, you'd want to stay close. But you wouldn't have taken a job at the _Planet_ if that was the only reason—you'd get something more transient, stay until we were back on our feet, and then leave again."

"Good," he said.

"We're on the eastern seaboard," she said. "There's a large population here. A lot of crime. A lot of people who need help." Not her. "You could have chosen any major city in the world, or at least in the country." She looked a little more closely at him and hazarded a guess. "But you've always loved Metropolis, haven't you?"

He looked faintly surprised at that, and Lois felt smug at having found him out. "That still isn't the reason for the _Planet_ job, though," she continued. "You can stay connected, find out about things before they happen, but with the way the internet works these days, you could have picked a dozen other occupations. Why print media? Because you had a taste of it. You fell in love with the work." It never crossed her mind that she could be wrong about this; there was something deep inside of him that she recognized as the twin to her own spirit, even if the thought was only half-formed at this early hour.

"Six hundred years ago, they would have burned you as a witch," he said. 

"For knowing what I shouldn't?"

"For seeing what everyone else doesn't," said Clark, "and for putting a name to it."

Lois pointed at herself. "Award-winning reporter Lois Lane," she said. "No witchcraft here. Aliens, on the other hand…" She suddenly found herself remembering what it was like to kiss him in a way that felt far too visceral for a public place. Clark must have been a mind-reader himself, though, because he saw it in her face and flushed for her.

He took a sip of his beer and glanced away from her for the first time since they'd sat down; he didn't seem to need to blink as much as a human, and Lois made a mental note to ask him about that later. "You're right," he said. "About all of it. There's one more reason, though." His gaze settled back on her again, as steady as it had ever been, and Lois marveled at all the strange turns in her life that had brought her to this moment, sharing a stolen moment with Superman—with _Clark_ , who was unlike anyone she had ever met for reasons that had very little to do with his extraterrestrial origin.

Why Metropolis? Why the _Daily Planet?_ He was meant for more than footnotes, and the City of Tomorrow could certainly offer him all the opportunities that his life in obscurity had lacked; there was permanence here, and a chance to build a life—a chance to build his identities, both private and public. He would want to write; he would almost certainly want to collaborate with both relief organizations and scientific institutions, now that he had shown himself to the world.

But then again…

Lois Lane, who valued clear thinking and rationality, who was married only to her job, and who absolutely did not believe in the line of garbage about love at first sight and soulmates, took a leap of faith.

"Because I'm here?" she asked.

"Because you're here," said Clark.

 

-

 

Somehow it still took her by surprise when she realized she was irrevocably in love with him. Accompanying the realization was the expected feeling of fear that reminded her of the sheer, teeth-gritting terror she had occasionally experienced in war zones, but fear rapidly gave way to surrealness. Lois had had flings before, and sometimes longer arrangements that worked based on a mutual lack of expectations and ended when her partners started placing conditions on her. She'd never imagined sharing a life with anyone; her passion was and always had been her work. And then: there was Clark Kent.

A week after his arrival, she'd announced to Perry that she was taking Clark on as her partner. Perry had shown his approval by arguing with her for half an hour instead of outright prohibiting the pairing; Lois had kept the news from Clark for an additional week, what she inwardly termed a 'trial period' even though she had already recognized the value of having for back-up a man who could take an effortlessly gentle tack with contacts, type at what he assured her was six-hundred words per minute, outrace a police car, understand the link between increased Intergang activity and LexCorp's rising stock and explain the complexities in a way the general public could understand, and spell every word in the dictionary correctly.

"Not _every_ word," said Clark, who was grammatically less creative than Lois and only got away with it because he smelled good.

By the time they had their first shared byline on the front page (Lane and Kent, of course, not Kent and Lane; Lois could only concede so much), they were living together. Clark maintained a residential address in Midtown, because in Lois's book it was too soon for either of them to announce they were far more entwined than just a shared byline, but at night he hung his cape in her New Troy apartment. He took her on dates, too, although she usually didn't recognize them as such until after they were over. Going out for dinner at Siegel's, flying at night over the West River, laughing their way through the National Cryptozoology Museum and Research Center—those were all simply things she _did with Clark_ , and _doing things with Clark_ had rapidly become an integral part of her life.

More often they absconded on impulse; Lois would say, "Take me somewhere empty," or Clark would tell her, "There's something I'd like to show you." The Lois of a decade ago would have resented herself for wanting to spend so much time with him, but the Lois of today had accepted that not everything had to be sacrificed at the altar of the news. He left her alone when she wanted to be alone, and that helped; he asked for her time but never demanded it, and he understood without having to be told that her own pursuits took priority. What Lois was increasingly discovering was that she could be alone _with him_. Instead of being a distraction, his presence was encouraging. Anyway, she liked having him around to bounce ideas off of, and when he _wasn't_ around she was constantly thinking of things to tell him and then forgetting to write them down for later.

Tonight they were drifting along the edge of a forest somewhere out west; Lois didn't know where they were, although as an Army brat she'd seen enough of the continental U.S. that she could probably figure out the state if she'd had a little more light. The moon was waxing above them in a silver crescent, and Clark was on his back. Lois was using him like a bench.

"Do you ever think about…" she said, and then lapsed into silence. Sometimes ideas came to her faster than she could spit them out; Clark could type six-hundred words in a minute, but she was no slouch herself, and she still felt like she lost entire concepts because she couldn't keep up with the rate of her thoughts.

"Think about…?" Clark prompted. One of his hands was curled over her thigh to keep her balanced; his other hand was at her hip, and he tapped one of his fingers there in idle encouragement.

"What if we'd met later?" she said. "After you came to Metropolis."

"You mean if Zod hadn't—"

"No," she said. "If I hadn't gone looking for you—or if you hadn't found me—if I hadn't figured out who you are."

He was frowning; she didn't need good lighting to know that much, and it came through in his voice and in the way his hand tightened over her thigh for a fraction of a second. Not enough bruise, not even enough to pinch, but enough to let her know that he would never let her go unless she wanted to leave.

What would have happened if she hadn't heard the story about the inhuman figure on the oil platform? If she hadn't tracked all those impossible tales from Canada to Kansas? What if she'd seen only the carefully edited version of himself that he presented at the _Planet_ , the unfaltering face he wore as Superman? It might have taken them years to reach this point. At first there was faith, and then the trust that came later, and now Lois finally had a conversational partner who never tired nor tired of her.

He wasn't bad-looking, either. A little neurotic about the state of her desk ('disaster area' was his favorite phrase for it), but even Superman couldn't be perfect.

"We would have found each other," he said. "Not easily, but in the end."

"You sound like a Lifetime movie. Nobody says things like that—"

"I say things like that, Ms. Lane." He was using his hero voice, but she could tell from his tone that he was smiling. His teeth glinted, and she bent over his face so he could see her rolling her eyes despite her own grin. When she moved, her hair slid over her shoulder and landed on his forehead, and he tucked it back behind her ear with hands that could break her.

"Do you think Lex Luthor is trying to make a small-scale replica of Zod's world engine?" she asked.

Clark blinked. "Is that why he built his own particle accelerator in New Jersey?"

"I wouldn't put it past him," said Lois, and they spent the rest of the night hammering out a theory. On the flight home she fell asleep over Niagra Falls and dreamed that Clark was obliging her by dangling Lex Luthor upside-down while she browbeat the world's most corrupt CEO for information. It was a good dream; when she woke up, she was smirking.

 

-

 

It didn't bother her that she was transparent to him, but it did bother her that she might be transparent _around_ him—when she bothered to be self-conscious, which wasn't often, she wondered if people noticed how he lit her up. That was one of the reasons why they'd agreed to keep their relationship a secret at first; until she felt sure her naked—all right, she could admit it— _adoration_ wasn't marching across her face, she thought it was better to downplay what they were to each other.

They were visiting Martha in Kansas when her epiphany finally came. If she were more musically inclined, she might have compared it to hearing a melody resolve, but she had a tin ear; instead, it reminded her of reaching the end of a piece of writing and discovering that she'd strung exactly the right words together in exactly the right order to create an article that was more that merely serviceable. What she experienced was a moment of sudden clarity that in her reporter's vocabulary was akin to grace.

Clark and Martha were sitting at Martha's new patio set outside, and Lois was coming back from the kitchen with a fresh pitcher of lemonade when she overheard them talking. Her name was what caught her attention.

"You do need to learn to hide how you look at her, Clark," Martha was saying. "One of you, Clark or Superman, has to figure out how to look at Lois with something less than utter devotion, or else your colleagues are going to put two and two together. Don't get me wrong," she added, "it's damn funny—"

"Mom," said Clark.

"All right," said Martha. "But she needs to tone it down, too."

"Lois doesn't…"

"Lois does," Martha said. "And that's just fine. It's not like the two of you are kids with a crush, but it's written all over your faces when you're near each other, and one day someone's going to catch that on film. I'd rather not have the U.S. Army showing up on my doorstep."

"I'll… work on it."

"Good," said Martha. "Have you proposed yet?"

 _"Mom,"_ said Clark. 

"Well, I want a ceremony, Clark," said Martha. "Even if the two of you don't want to make things legal, there's no reason we can't have some kind of a party. When do I get to meet the rest of the Lanes?"

There was a pause, and then Clark said, "You're doing this to me on purpose."

Martha laughed. "Maybe," she said. Lois couldn't help the snort that leaked out of her at the teasing note in Martha's voice, and at the accusing note in Clark's; it was hard to wind him up, but it was worth it, and if she could spend the rest of her life figuring him out, then she would consider her life well-spent.

She felt easy; not entirely at peace, because Lois Lane never let up, but calm in spite of her anticipation of what was yet to come. There were still dark places in the world, but the task she had given herself was one of illumination, and she knew that the man at her side blazed. And that was good, that was all right—Lois herself had scorched more than one person with her intensity, and now she had finally found a partner who was her match.

In the meantime, there was the lemonade she had sloshed all over herself, and the hot Kansas day, and Martha; and there was, always, Clark, who was waiting for her in the sunshine. 

Lois righted her pitcher, and then she went to join him.


End file.
